논문 : 『세일즈맨의 죽음』의 유대성 = The Jewishness of Death of a Salesman

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Arthur Miller`s Death of a Salesman seems so wedded to American culture, yet can be analyzed from a Jewish perspective. Willy Loman attempts to gather his scattered family, though he lives in American modern society. Like a Jewish patriarch, he attempts to bind his family and preserve the faith of his fathers. Being exiled and removed far away from his home, Willy roams around his country and sells his good will. Wandering and dispersal are key aspects of Willy`s life and integral parts of the Jewish experience. Additionally, he suffers from his inability and negligence of performing his duties in his chosen house, which demonstrates the Jewish shared experience and their shared destiny. Like Hamlet`s father in Shakespeare`s play, Ben`s specter appears and reappears repeatedly in Death of a Salesman. The boundary of past and present is constantly blurred through Willy`s memories. His memories retain those of moral responsibility, the Holocaust, and Jewish history. Self-denial, betrayal, and responsibility, thus, become the core of Willy`s drama. Under Jewish moral code, Willy suffers from the guilty conscious arising from the failure of moral fulfillment to his descendants. The story of betrayal also dates back to his elder brother and his father. Death of a Salesman, in this context, retains the collective memories of Jewish history and is deeply rooted in Jewishness.